Monday, February 01, 2010

One Small Detail, Burns Through Cash

I appreciate the fact that their are individual minds out there that can figure things out like nuclear fission, and when I read headlines such as this, Fusion Power a Step Closer After Giant Laser Blast, I think, excellent, and why haven’t the minds in the world figured this out sooner.

Two things about this story.  First.

A working prototype of a such a plant could be built in a decade, Glenzer said.

I recommend you don’t sell off your utility stocks just yet.  Ten years is a bit away, and, more importatly in ten years there only could be a prototype.

The second thing about this story, though, indicates the lightbulb of this idea is a bit dim.

"Each one of these (fuel pellet - ed.) costs between ten [thousand] and a hundred thousand dollars,” Mauel said. To use the pellet method to generate nuclear fusion power, “they’ll have to cost less than ten cents a piece."

I’d have to say that that’s a pretty big cost spread for each individual fuel pellet, too, not to mention the economies of scale required to get each fuel pellet down to less than ten cents a piece.

I don’t want to pay for it, but I probably am.

Posted by John Venlet on 02/01 at 07:13 PM
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